Duplicity
Duplicity has Julia Roberts and Clive Owen who are both pretty good (and pretty) in a caper flick that unfolds like Mr and Mrs Smith meet Ocean’s 11. Owen seems to be the go to guy for spooks having trouble holding down a spy gig because like in the recent (and also underachieving) International he plays an ex-MI6 agent named Ray Koval who years ago while with the agency was burned in the field by Claire Stenwick (Roberts) a CIA operative. Now they’re still both in the cloak and dagger business but at a more competitive level – corporate espionage. Ray is a newcomer at a pharmaceutical company headed by Richard Garsik (a justifiably over the top Paul Giamatti) while Claire has been spying for some time in the employ of Garsik’s arch rival Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson as always with the perfect amount of aplomb) and as the flashbacks pile up we wonder are they really in collusion to defraud their employers and most importantly can they trust one another. Tony Gilroy is a man with impressive credits and he wrote and directed Duplicity. However outside of a rollicking slow-mo donnybrook between Garsik and Tully the film is duplicitous for leading one to believe that he is about to be engaged by an intriguing spy thriller. Perhaps it should be named Disappointing.